Mistaking Provocations For Deterrence

Israel is losing a former ally, as Turkey continues its Islamist slide. But the most important factor behind Israel’s diplomatic isolation, it seems to me, is the current American administration. Imagine that Dubya or John McCain were president. Would the flotilla incident have occurred? I doubt it. When Bush was president, Israel’s enemies knew with certainty that the White House would support Israel’s right to defend herself against provocation. American strength not only guaranteed Israeli freedom of action, it deterred a lot of devious behavior. ~Matt Continetti

Greg Scoblete says this claim is proof of Continetti’s “historical amnesia,” and that’s partly right, but it’s also proof that there isn’t much to support the argument that Israeli security is enhanced by unwavering, uncritical American support. What we saw between 2001 and 2009 was arguably the most reflexively supportive U.S. administration since the founding of Israel and at the same time a steady, fairly rapid deterioration of Israel’s international standing and extensive damage to Israel’s strategic interests. Just because one happened after the other doesn’t necessarily mean that reflexive, uncritical U.S. support had to lead to Israel’s international isolation, but there are quite a few reasons to believe that it did. We can observe something similar in U.S.-Georgian relations. Strong expressions of support and backing for an ally, including the promise of future NATO membership, did not result in greater security for Georgia, but instead encouraged the Georgian government to embark on a disastrous war that severely damaged its economy and ensured the permanent loss of the territories it was trying to take over. What Continetti and the like think is a deterrent against attack is usually a provocation inviting international condemnation and an invitation to allied recklessness.

Concerning Lebanon and Gaza, Bush’s stalwart support and encouragement allowed Olmert a free hand to pursue his policy of overkill and disproportionate response. This is an approximation, but my guess is that these two operations by themselves did roughly 60% of the damage to Israel’s international standing. The blockade and the flotilla raid account for another 30%. These two operations were responsible for more of the bad blood between Turkey and Israel than anything before the flotilla raid itself. The Bush administration enabled or allowed those operations, and publicly defended them against all critics (remember Condi Rice’s “birth pangs of a new Middle East” remark?), but the main contribution to Israel’s isolation has come from Israel’s own excessive military actions. Had Obama been even more unswervingly in lockstep with Israel on every issue, that wouldn’t have eliminated the causes of Turkey’s alienation from Israel, and it wouldn’t have deterred anything. It simply would have identified the U.S. more closely with whatever action Israel took.

As for the flotilla raid, if Bush or McCain had been in office, U.S. support for the Gaza blockade would have been unyielding and U.S. indifference to Turkish interests and concerns and to Palestinian grievances would have been even greater. Something similar would have occurred, and it is possible that it would have been far worse. It is likely that the Turkish government would have been more resistant to requests from Bush and McCain to prevent the flotilla from departing for Gaza than they were to Obama’s requests. At least Obama had made some minimal attempt to repair U.S.-Turkish relations that Bush had done so much to wreck, so there was a small chance that Erdogan would pay more attention to Obama, but Obama had just gone out of his way to humiliate and slap down the Turkish government on account of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Had McCain been President when the nuclear deal was announced, we can’t rule out the possibility that he would have launched a diplomatic crisis with Ankara, and he might have floated the idea of expelling Turkey from NATO. We should understand that a McCain administration would be filled with people who think that Turkey is in the wrong in this episode. Thanks to its poor response to the raid, the Obama administration is making a mockery of the “model partnership” it wanted to cultivate with Turkey, but had McCain been in office there would have been no rapprochement to sabotage. It is foolish to think that Turkey would have been intimidated into stopping the flotilla by an administration filled with people who are intensely and fundamentally hostile to Turkey’s more independent foreign policy.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 17 comments

17 Responses to Mistaking Provocations For Deterrence

What we saw between 2001 and 2009 was arguably the most reflexively supportive U.S. administration since the founding of Israel and at the same time a steady, fairly rapid deterioration of Israel’s international standing and extensive damage to Israel’s strategic interests.

Good point. I have no idea how these people think Israel was somehow more secure under a reflexively pro-Israel administration like Bush’s, considering that Israel fought two wars, and ended up with hostile enemies capable of hitting inside Israel on both its northern and southern fronts.

“American strength not only guaranteed Israeli freedom of action…” – True.
“… it deterred a lot of devious behavior…” Maybe yes, maybe no somewhere, but not in Israel or America. Unless dropping willy peter on civilian populations just to see them burn, and water boarding prisoners just to see them squirm doesn’t count as devious. GWOT Rules.

First of all, there are two Aarons commenting here. I’m Aaron the Pro-Israel Hack, not the Aaron who commented above.

I think Larison’s premise is wrong. Larison writes:

What we saw between 2001 and 2009 was arguably the most reflexively supportive U.S. administration since the founding of Israel and at the same time a steady, fairly rapid deterioration of Israel’s international standing and extensive damage to Israel’s strategic interests.

This is the view from a comfortable position outside of Israel. Even on its own terms, it’s wrong. Israel’s international standing was already at a very low point in 2001. When Israel is the target of terrorist attacks its international standing plummets, and October 2000 on was no exception. Even before September-October 2000, Israel was the target of critics because of the Camp David summit. Israel’s international standing had some ups and downs over Bush’s time in office, but I think it’s about the same now as it was when Bush came into office. None of that is intended as a defense of the Bush administration’s policy.

Israel’s strategic goal is for the Palestinians to accept the 1948 occupation, i.e., the State of Israel. It’s bizarre to claim that Israel is further from this goal now than when Bush came into office. At that time, there was a bloody war being waged against Israel. Unlike the first intifada, this “al-Aksa Intifada” was orchestrated from above (Fatah) and was relatively heavily armed. Palestinian hatred of the State of Israel as probably at an all time high – and not just in the Territories. There had recently been anti-Jewish riots in Israel, with Jews being dragged from their cars and beaten and Arab-Israeli citizens shot by police.

Today, by contrast, Judea and Samaria are relatively peaceful and prosperous. They’re ruled by someone much more moderate than Arafat. Most of the Israeli roadblocks have been quietly removed. (By the way, I think that’s how the Gaza blockade should be ended: gradually and quietly.) Even better, from Israel’s side, is that Palestinians themselves perceive a bigger split between the West Bank and Gaza, largely as a result of the Hamas coup.

Again, I don’t accept international standing and strategic interests as the sole criteria for judging policies. But even by those criteria, Israel seems no worse off now, and maybe in some ways better off.

Aaron, you say “Israel’s strategic goal is for the Palestinians to accept the 1948 occupation ” – Please identify the offer, made any time between 1948 and the present, in which Israel agreed to withdraw to the Green Line (the 1948 armistice line) in exchange for peace.

I think Israel would gain enormous credibility internationally with such an offer, and I believe Israel could quickly strike a peace deal with that offer. But this is the most generous offer to date and this reflects Israeli policy on the ground.

If you believe that the West Bank is more peaceful and prosperous now than it was in the 1990’s, there’s a serious divide between what you know of the conflict and the facts.

The West Bank – the larger of the two areas comprising the Palestinian Authority (PA) – experienced a limited revival of economic activity in 2009 as a result of inflows of donor assistance, the PA’s implementation of economic reforms, improved security, and the easing of movement and access restrictions by the Israeli Government. Nevertheless, overall standard-of-living measures remain below those seen prior to the start of the second intifada in 2000. The almost decade-long downturn has been largely a result of Israeli closure policies – a steady increase in Israeli-imposed movement and access restrictions across the West Bank in response to security concerns in Israel – which disrupted labor flows, manufacturing, and commerce, both external and internal.

“Israel’s strategic goal is for the Palestinians to accept the 1948 occupation, i.e., the State of Israel.”

As I recall, Saudi Arabia proposed n 2002 a comprehensive peace with the Arab world conditioned on Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders. Not only did the Bush-Cheney Administration greet this remarkable proposal (considering the source) with a cold shoulder, but Israel likewise treated it with disdain. So much for Israel’s strong desire for peace with its neighbors. It has long been my belief that Israel needs enemies and a warlike state because of the great internal divisions among Israeli Jews. I think eventually there will have to be an international conference called by the U.S. to impose a settlement on the parties, just as various Congresses of the Great Powers in the 19th century resolved international conflicts. The 2002 Saudi proposal was a great missed opporunity by the unimaginative Bush-Cheney Administration to arrive at a long delayed peaceful solution to the mess in Palestine. But, then, the Bush-Cheney Administration was busily concocting their own solution to Middle East peace—peace through war.

tbraton, there have been a number of proposals on both sides that ended up going nowhere for whatever reason, including Barak’s offer at Taba, Olmert’s offer shortly before leaving office, and the Arab Peace Initiative you mention.

It’s not true that Israel treated the proposal with disdain. In fact, in 2002, Israel proposed various amendments (which were rejected), and several Israeli politicians, including Peres and Olmert, have made positive comments since. But the Arab League has, with minor exceptions, not pursued the initiative on a diplomatic level, leaving Israel to either say “yes,” or “no,” full stop.

If we ever have direct peace talks with Fatah, the Initiative will no doubt form a basis for negotiations, along with all the other previous proposals. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Israel’s strategic goal is not to obtain a peace agreement. I meant what I said: it’s for the Arabs to accept the 1948 occupation, i.e., a State of Israel inside of Palestine.

None of the proposals mentioned come close to that. None addressed Israel’s reasonable concerns for security.

Right or wrong, there’s been a pretty broad Israeli near-consensus on this since September 2000. Most people who don’t share that view, including Daniel Larison and the commenters here, show zero interest in addressing the concerns of Israelis. That’s fine, it’s not your problem. But Israelis today are realistic, if not realist; the large majority are not ideological, i.e., they’re not against land for peace in principle. Their central concern is security – a classic Realist interest.

But there are very few in the peace camp, especially outside of Israel, who are willing to listen to the majority of Israelis’ concerns and to address them. I and others have expressed these concerns repeatedly in forums like this, but it’s rare that we get any serious answer. (And no, I’m not going to express them again here. Anyone who’s interested in the other side’s concerns can easily find them.) One fine example of someone willing to engage the opposing view is Dan Fleshler, who writes the excellent Realistic Dove blog. (I think it was a commenter here who told me about him.) I wish there were more people like Fleshler in the peace camp.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. If the goal was to get Palestinians to accept 1948, that was accomplished at Oslo. Every Israeli peace proposal since then has included substantial territorial adjustments in Israel’s favor in the West Bank and the expanded, post 1967 “Jerusalem.” Maybe this is what Aaron the pro-Israel hack means by “Israel’s reasonable concerns for security” but if it is, he should stop talking as if the issue in 1948.

It’s getting really hard to debate Israel’s supporters simply because they are so unmoored from reality.

William, there’s a big difference between getting PLO to accept 1948 and getting the Palestinians to accept it, as the rise in terrorism during the first three years of Oslo demonstrates. As long as the Palestinian Authority can’t credibly commit to controlling rejectionists, the Palestinians can’t be said to have accepted 1948 in any meaningful sense.

William: “It’s getting really hard to debate Israel’s supporters simply because they are so unmoored from reality.”

Exactly. What RBK above exhibits is the way Israel claims the right to decide when the Palestinians have “really” done enough to satisfy them, and to keep attacking them and expanding until that point is reached. Some Israelis are doing this out of genuine paranoid fear (such as Aaron who posts here seeems to be) and some are doing it disingenuously as a way to justify continuing expansion indefnitely.

Aaron’s posts about Sderot perfectly illustrate the moral vacuum at the heart of Israel’s policy. In order for Israelis in Sderot to sleep in peace and a few tens of Israeli lives to be preserved, any number of innocent Gazans can have their lives destroyed, socially, economically or even physically.

Israel genuinely is the domestic analogy equivalent of the paranoid gun nut of Hollywood fantasy, who claims the right to shoot his neighbours’ children in “self defence” over the slightest perceived slight.

It stems, I suspect, from an underlying guilt because they know in their hearts that the very founding of modern Israel was a monstrous colonial wrong. Until that is openly recognised by Israelis, at the same time as Palestinians accept openly that the clock cannot be turned back and today’s Israelis removed or subjugated without a further monstrous wrong, there can be no real solution to the problem short of the kind of brute force total victory sought by the likes of Aaron and the Israeli regime.

“It’s not true that Israel treated the proposal with disdain. In fact, in 2002, Israel proposed various amendments (which were rejected), and several Israeli politicians, including Peres and Olmert, have made positive comments since. But the Arab League has, with minor exceptions, not pursued the initiative on a diplomatic level, leaving Israel to either say “yes,” or “no,” full stop.”

Well, your take on the matter conflicts with that of others, including several co-religionists of yours. According to Wikipedia:

“Henry Siegman former Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S./Middle East Project at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in the Financial Times on April 26, 2007 that:

“ The Arab League meeting in Cairo yesterday was unprecedented in its overture to Israel, offering to meet Israeli representatives to clarify the peace initiative that the League re-endorsed at its meeting in Riyadh on March 28. The two events underscore the complete reversal of the paradigm that for so long has defined the Israeli-Arab conflict…. The Israeli response to this tectonic change in Arab psychology and politics was worse than rejection: it was complete indifference, as if this 180-degree turnround in Arab thinking had no meaning for Israel and its future in the region. Ehud Olmert, prime minister, and his government have reflexively rejected every Arab peace offer, whether from Saudi Arabia, Syria, the Arab League or Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Ariel Sharon’s and Mr Olmert’s policies these past seven years have shaped a new paradigm in which Israel is the rejectionist party. The Three Nos of Khartoum have been replaced by the Three Nos of Jerusalem: no negotiations with Syria, no acceptance of the Arab initiative and, above all, no peace talks with the Palestinians.[66] ”

Ian Black, The Guardian’s Middle East Editor, wrote on 18 October 2008 that:

“ It was common ground that part of the problem is that the Arab initiative was overshadowed by the worst incident of the second intifada – when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 30 Israelis at their Passover meal on the eve of the Beirut summit – and Israel reoccupied most of the West Bank. The plan generated headlines when it was re-endorsed, again under Saudi auspices, at the Riyadh Arab summit last year. But thanks to Israeli objections it did not get a mention when Bush convened the Annapolis conference a few months later. The Annapolis goal of Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of his presidency looks like a bad joke. Ignorance is part of the problem. As someone quipped: you can wake an Israeli of a certain age at 3am, say the word “Khartoum” and he will immediately identify the post-1967 war Arab summit in the Sudanese capital that produced three notorious “noes” – no peace, no recognition, no negotiations with Israel (which set the Arab consensus, broken only by Egypt, for the next 20 years). But the Saudi plan, which says exactly the opposite, is still likely to produce blank stares at any time. Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, misrepresented the Arab initiative as a take-it-or-leave-it diktat, claiming it required the return of millions of Palestinian refugees – a red line for the any Israeli government – when it in fact talks sensibly of reaching “a just solution”. Nor does it preclude negotiating land swaps, for example, so that Palestinians would get territory to compensate them for areas where post-1967 Israeli settlements cannot be moved.[67] ”

Jonathan Freedland, also from The Guardian, wrote on December 17, 2008 that:

“ There are problems with the Arab plan. For one thing, there has been no public diplomacy for it, no public face for it – no equivalent of Anwar Sadat’s breakthrough visit to Israel, proving the sincerity of his desire for peace. And how would it work in practice? […] And yet the logic behind it is compelling. Right now, the Palestinians don’t have enough to offer Israel to make the sacrifices required for a peace deal worthwhile. But an accord with the entire Arab world, that would be a prize worth bending for. And, while today’s Palestinian leadership is too weak to make compromises on, for instance, Jerusalem, united Arab support would give the Palestinians all the cover they need.[68] ” ”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative#International_reactions

tbraton: I’m no fan of the Guardian nor of Ian Black, in general, but Black’s characterisation of the situation in your quoted extract is basically correct.

He is typically over-generous to the Israeli side when he says that “ignorance is part of the problem”, as if the ignorance weren’t wilful on the part of the Israelis, based as it is on their wish to pretend they hadn’t had a reasonable settlement offer in order to rationalise their determination to go for maximalist objectives, which in turn is based upon their perception that they have overwhelming force on their side.

Had it not been for US blank cheque backing for Israel, Israel might have reached a compromise. When the histories are written some decades hence, it might be recognised that that was Israel’s best chance for long term survival, based as it might have been upon negotiating peace from a position of strength.

What RBK above exhibits is the way Israel claims the right to decide when the Palestinians have “really” done enough to satisfy them, and to keep attacking them and expanding until that point is reached.

Well, naturally. That’s what “satisfy” means.

Maybe morality dictates that Israelis accept a “peace” that renders normal life in the south impossible and that results in a continuing low-level war (about 6 Israelis a month were being killed after Oslo was signed). But I doubt any other country would accept that; Israel certainly wouldn’t. Sorry.

As for getting Israelis to acknowledge that the founding of their country was a “monstrous colonial wrong”: I’m not sure what that’s supposed to accomplish beyond providing some psychic satisfaction for you and the Palestinians. But sure, I’ll admit much of the pre-1948 immigration and settlement activities weren’t justified. The Jews certainly had no historic right to settle Palestine. As Aaron said, Israelis by and large aren’t ideological.

tbraton: What a bizarre comment! What makes you know what religion (if any) I follow, or what religion the folks you quoted follow? For that matter, why should our supposedly shared religion affect whether I accept their analysis?

Here’s a good outline of what Israeli and Arab leaders have had to say about the Beirut declaration. It points out that Barak, Livni, and Peres have praised it, and that Arab leaders have been unwilling to negotiate the agreement or to pursue it diplomatically. As Amr Moussa, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, put it, “The Israelis response was to ask for an amendment. We tell them to accept it first.”

“tbraton: What a bizarre comment! What makes you know what religion (if any) I follow, or what religion the folks you quoted follow? For that matter, why should our supposedly shared religion affect whether I accept their analysis?”

Well, based on your remarks, I assumed that you were either an Israeli or an American Jew, which would explain your touchy defense of Israel’s response to the Saudi initiative of 2002. In responding to your post, I quoted three writers whose interpretation is close to mine and directly contradict your assertions. I thought I could safely assume that two of the three were Jewish, based on the fact that Henry Siegman (as my post made clear) had previously served as Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress (a pretty good tipoff) and Jonathan Freedland based on his name and now confimed by Google search. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Freedland (“Born into a Jewish family, he is the son of Michael Freedland, the biographer and journalist.”) I also suspect that Ian Black may be Jewish since he has written “Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services.”

The significance of their Jewish bacground is that it potentially dispels any charge of anti-Semitism against them, such as could be launched against any Arab or Christian gentile. They, of course, could always be labelled, just as Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod were recently labelled by the Israelis as “self-hating Jews.”